CHAP. XI.] WHEREIX THE TWO RELIGIONS AGREE. 531 



of the Buddhists, though in a great degree borrowed from 

 the Brahmans, occupy a much less prominent position in 

 their mythology, and are less intimately identified with 

 their system of religion. Their attention has been directed 

 less to physical than to metaphysical disquisitions, and 

 their views of cosmogony have as little of truth as of 

 imagination in their details. The basis of the system is a 

 declaration of the eternity of matter, and its submission at 

 remote intervals to decay and re-formation ; but this and 

 the organisation of animal life are but the results 01 

 spontaneity and procession, not the products of will and 

 design on the part of an all powerful Creator. 



Buddhism adopts something approaching to the 

 mundane theory of the Brahmans, in the multiplicity and 

 superposition of worlds and the division of the earth into 

 concentric continents, each separated by oceans of various 

 fabulous liquids. Its notions of geography are at once 

 fanciful and crude; and again borrowing its chronology 

 from the Shastras, its legends extend over boundless por- 

 tions of time, but it invests with the authority of history 

 those occurrences only which have taken place since the 

 birth of Gotama Buddha. 



The Buddhists believe in the existence of lokas, or 

 heavens, each differing in glory, and serving as the tem- 

 porary residences of demigods and divinities, as well as of 

 men whose etherialisation is but inchoate, and who have 

 yet to visit the earth in further births and acquire in 

 future transmigrations their complete attainment of 

 Nirwana. They believe likewise in the existence of hells 

 which are the abodes of demons or tormentors, and in 

 which the wicked undergo a purgatorial imprisonment 

 preparatory to an extended probation upon earth Here 

 their torments are in proportion to their crimes, and 



man was just pushing off upon the 

 lake, " do you see the style of these 

 boats, in which our fishermen always 

 put to sea, and that that spar is al- 

 most equivalent to a second canoe, 



which keeps the first from upsetting ? 

 It is precisely so with myself : I add 

 on your religion to steady my oicn, 

 because I consider Christianity a very 

 safe outrigger to Buddhism." 



M M 2 



